Monumental ideas

Monuments are meant to provide a lasting impression. Madison’s Confederate Rest and the statue of Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville, Virginia, are poignant examples of the power of carved words to provoke.

Artist Terese Agnew succeeds in harnessing this power in her arresting exhibit, Writing in Stone: Wisconsin’s Historic, Cultural and Natural Assets Remembered.

Agnew, a sculptor and quilter who lives on a farm outside LaFarge, has created headstones, trees and other objects for an exhibit at the James Watrous Gallery. Agnew’s art does not memorialize warriors or traditional power brokers but lesser-known Wisconsinites: Caroline Quarlls, the first person to escape slavery though Wisconsin’s Underground Railroad; Increase Lapham, the conservationist and founder of the National Weather Service; Lloyd Barbee, a legislator who led Wisconsin’s civil rights movement; and Ojibwe tribal leader Walter Bresette. Other pieces pay tribute to labor historians, voting rights activists and advocates for immigrant workers. There’s a monument to the Monarch butterfly, which may survive human encroachment, and the once-plentiful passenger pigeons, which were hunted to extinction. (The artist even provides packets of milkweed seeds to help restore butterfly habitats.)

Agnew constructed the stone-like monuments from repurposed insulation foam and lumber and collaborated with historians, artists and an ethicist to create the content. Two years ago when she began the project, she hauled a cardboard mockup of one of the monuments to a dinner party hosted by Madison-based author Judith Woodburn. One of the guests was Kathy Borkowski, director of the Wisconsin Historical Society Press, who invited Agnew to her office the very next day. “The first thing she did was get three empty boxes. She was asking me about the parameters of the project. I said I wanted to leave a lot of room for input,” says Agnew. “She started saying ‘Have you read this? You gotta read this.’ and filling the boxes.” From there, Agnew created a reading list, which was distributed to more than 200 book and history clubs, asking for feedback.

Ultimately Agnew was looking for “... people that cared not just about getting ahead here and now, but what we are doing for our next generation and for the lands that surround us — how we are helping to make things better.”

The final piece of the show is called “The Speaking Tree.” One or two guests can step onto a platform to hear a soundscape created by Agnew’s husband, Rob Danielson, who compiled four years of surround-sound recordings from a wooded hollow near the couple’s farm. The sounds of nature are layered with the soothing voice of Ojibwe leader Bresette, who shares gentle yet powerful “instructions” from tribal ancestors: “Be truthful, be gentle, share and be strong.”

Agnew says she hopes the exhibit sparks curiosity about Wisconsin’s history. And she also hopes guests will question their own role in history: “What am I doing to make my community, or the world, or my yard a better place for the next generation?”

Writing in Stone will be on display through Nov. 5 at the James Watrous Gallery in the Overture Center. On Nov. 4 , Agnew will host a panel discussion (“Whose Dream Is it?”) at 4 p.m. at Overture Center. Actor Blanche Brown will perform a piece based on the words of Caroline Quarlls, who escaped slavery through Wisconsin’s Underground Railroad.